Most companies see no major payoff from AI, shows survey

BENGALURU: Artificial intelligence has become a staple in offices worldwide, but the vast majority of companies are failing to convert early hype into meaningful business results, according to Atlassian’s 2025 AI Collaboration Index.

The study, covering 180 Fortune 1000 executives and 12,000 knowledge workers across six countries, shows daily AI usage nearly doubled in the past year. Employees reported being 33% more productive and saving 1.3 hours a day, but 96% of organizations said they have seen little or no improvement in efficiency, innovation or work quality. Atlassian warned that the fixation on personal productivity risks backfiring, estimating that Fortune 500 companies could forfeit as much as $98 billion annually by chasing time savings rather than embedding AI into coordination systems.

“Teams are basically operating in the same way, just with some extra bells and whistles,” one Fortune 500 executive told the survey’s researchers.

Only 4% of companies reported transformational benefits from AI. These outliers distinguish themselves by connecting AI to company-wide knowledge bases, setting up integrated systems that allow coordination across teams, and treating AI as an active participant in workflows. Firms focused on AI-enabled coordination were nearly twice as likely to report significant efficiency gains as those narrowly targeting task automation.

India stood out as a fast-moving market. 77% of Indian knowledge workers now use AI daily, up from 46% last year, compared with 59% in the US, 54% in Germany, and under half in France and Australia. Overall, 98% of Indian respondents use AI weekly. Indian professionals report saving 112 minutes a day, about 47% more productive on average, well above global averages.

Crucially, 86% of Indian workers said their leaders encourage AI experimentation, compared to 75% in the US and 66% in France. Instead of abandoning AI when results fall short, Indian teams refined prompts (30%) or provided better examples (33%) to improve outcomes. Still, 91% said AI remains constrained by lack of access to the right data.

The report also flags risks: more than a third of executives said AI has wasted time or misled teams, while workers admitted to relying on unapproved tools that worsen data silos and create security exposure. Executives remain bullish, however, predicting that by 2030 only a third of work will be fully done by humans, with AI nearly doubling the number of innovative ideas pursued.